Newbie guide
If you've never played a Massively Multiplayer Online Game before, relax: World of Warcraft is very easy to get started in and to have fun with. If you're a MMOG veteran, this guide should help get you up to speed quickly. If you aren't, this guide should help give you a general idea of what to expect as you begin playing. If you're finding some of the terminology a little daunting, there's a glossary which should help explain some of the more common terms. If you are looking for a german guide, you can download one here: GERMAN WoW Beginners Guide --Bl4ckSh33p Editing This Guide As this is a Wiki, anybody (even you) can edit this page or any other. If you see something you disagree with, feel free to change it or add your own information. If you'd like to write a general comment about the page itself, click the Discussion tab at the top of the page. Don't forget to add a signature at the end of your comments by adding --~~~. Character Creation There is a very slight (+/-1 point) stat difference based on race; starting stats are determined mainly by your class. Your race choice determines your allegiance (either Horde or Alliance), your starting area, and your Racial Traits. See the Race and Class pages for discussions of the different race and class options. As your character increases in level, these differences become negligible with the exception of certain racial traits. Therefore, play the race that you find most interesting and don't sweat the little differences. Can't decide what class to play? Make one of each that sound interesting, play them up to level 5 or so, and decide then. It only takes an hour or two to get the first few levels, and then you'll have a much better idea of what it's like to play each class. One important note: The Alliance vs. Horde distinction is a very important one, as you can't interact with those on the opposing side outside of combat. If you're playing on a server with friends, you all want to be on the same side so that you can chat, etc., so make sure you all either select Horde races or Alliance races. Also know that on PVP servers you may only play one faction, Alliance or Horde, per server. Intro Fly-thru and Starting Areas Intro Fly-thru After you choose the starting details of your character, you will be given what looks like an in-game movie based on your race with a voice-over giving some background history of the race. This is actually a real-time fly-thru in the game and you will see actual players moving around if you look carefully. The fly-thru usually starts at a capital city and flies through parts of the country-side to your starting area. Starting Areas Depending on your race, you will start in 1 of 6 starting areas: http://www.cosmosui.org/images/horde-mini.gif Horde: * Orc: Valley of Trials, Durotar, Kalimdor * Tauren: Camp Narache, Mulgore, Kalimdor * Troll: Valley of Trials (same as Orc), Durotar, Kalimdor * Undead: Deathknell, Tirisfal Glades, Eastern Kingdoms http://www.cosmosui.org/images/alliance-mini.gif Alliance: * Dwarf: Coldridge Valley, Dun Morogh, Eastern Kingdoms * Gnome: Coldridge Valley (same as Dwarf), Dun Morogh, Eastern Kingdoms * Human: Northshire Abbey, Elwynn Forest, Eastern Kingdoms * Night-Elf: Aldrassil, Teldrassil Levelling and Experience Getting Experience Depending on your race you will start in a different geographical region with some common quests and some race/class-specific quests with several low-level creatures around and a limited number of NPCs. You can identify quests giving NPCs from the !' over their heads. When you complete the quest by meeting its requirements, the quest giver will have a '? over its head. The first monsters you kill will not attack you until you attack them, but most monsters will attack you automatically when you get within a certain range. Friendly creatures (NPCs, players of the the same Faction and their pets) will have green names when you mouse over them, neutral creatures (those that attack only when attacked) will have yellow names, and hostile creatures (those that attack when near enough) will have red names Most of your first 10 levels will come from newbie quests and from monsters you kill as a part of doing quests. If you want to level as fast as possible, try to avoid getting trapped in bad groups that aren't trying to finish quests. It's faster to just solo through your quests, if your group is running around trying to grind through fancy-looking monsters. You should be able to get to level 5 very quickly and be able to get the feel for the character race/class. Levels 5-10 should go fast too, but they usually involve larger distances so it's easier to get distracted. In my opinion, most of the class fun starts once you get past this early stage, and you will be far more mobile. -- Mark For more class-specific tips when starting out, see the "Starting a ..." guides from the Class section. Obtaining Wealth You gain money in World of Warcraft by completing some of the quests (some of them have no monetary reward associated with them), killing mobs and looting their corpses, selling excess inventory items to the merchant NPCs, or learning one or more professions. As you go up in level, both the quest rewards and the money from mobs increase, as a general rule. Also, it has been my experience that the humanoid mobs loot for more cash per looting than any of the beast type mobs who aren't quest-related. As for learning a profession and selling the product of your labors, that all depends upon how glutted the market is with that tradeskill and/or those products. If the market is glutted at the moment, hold onto your products and maybe they will be more in demand later. Alternatively, you might wish to travel around and check the local markets of other towns. Just because one town is glutted with a product doesn't mean all towns have that product. There might be a market untapped out there you would not otherwise have known about. Note that very often, you can get more money by selling raw materials (skins, ore, gems, and herbs) than by selling finished products (armor, weapons, potions). In addition, there are always the Trade Channel and the Auction House where you can hawk your wares. Rest While in an Inn or a major city (such as Thunder Bluff), your player portrait will begin to glow, indicating that you are resting. If you log off here, you will continue to rest while offline. When rested, your XP bar will turn blue, and a notch will appear indicating exactly how rested you are. You will earn double XP from killing monsters while rested until your XP bar fills to the notch. One bubble of rested XP is earned for every 8 hours spent resting, up to a maximum of one-and-a-half full levels. In other words, you can leave your character resting in an inn for up to ten days without playing before you earn the maximum amount of rest state. You also become rested while logged off in the wilderness, but only at 1/4 the normal rate. Be sure to log off in an inn whenever possible! Training New Skills As you progress and gain levels in the game, you will be able to learn many new and exciting skills and spells. These are all learned at your class trainer in the various cities. If you're having troubles locating the class trainer, just ask a city guard. The class trainers will offer you more skills and spells at every even-numbered level. Death Upon dying in World of Warcraft, all of your equipped items immediately take a 10% durability reduction. (This applies only to items equipped when you died, not to items in your inventory.) You have a few minutes in which to be resurrected by a player, or you may release yourself to the nearest graveyard as a spirit. While in spirit form, you can run back to your corpse and rejoin it for no additional penalty by selecting the "Resurrect Now" button when you come within range; you come back to life with half health and half mana. Run speed is increased while you are a spirit, and you are able to walk on water. A spirit healer is also present in each graveyard who can bring you back to life immediately, saving you a trip to your corpse. However, doing this will cause all of your equippable items to take an additional 25% durability hit; this applies both to equipped items, and to items in your inventory. In addition, you will suffer from resurrection sickness. This sickness decreases all of your attributes and damage dealt by 75%, and has a duration that varies depending on your level: * Characters from level 1-10 are not affected. (However, they still take the additional durability decrease) * Characters from level 11-19 will suffer from one minute of sickness for each level they are above 10. For example, a level 12 character would be sick for two minutes, while a level 18 character would be sick for eight. * Characters level 20 and up suffer from ten minutes of sickness. Note: If you are killed by another player in PvP combat, you do not take the initial 10% durability hit. However, you will still take a 25% hit and suffer from ressurection sickness if you are resurrected by a spirit healer. Travel Wyverns, Gryphons, Bats, and Hippogryphs The most common form of transportation in World of Warcraft is a Gryphon, Wyvern, Bat, or Hippogryph. Gryphons and Hippogryphs provide for the Alliance, while Wyverns and Bats are aligned with the Horde. Many settlements have a flight path, with an NPC who will allow you to travel to various connected points for a fee. Before you can use a flight path you must travel to it on foot and "learn" the path by clicking on the flight path NPC who will have a green !' above their heads. Flight paths are fixed; you cannot control the creature you are on, so sit back and enjoy the view. Zeppelins and Boats Travel between the two continents and to locations more remote than are accessable via flight path is done via large Zeppelins, Boats, or similar. These cost nothing to use, and operate on a fairly rapid schedule. The Zeppelin between the Horde cities of Orgrimmar and The Undercity is one example. Inns and the Hearthstone Each player receives a Hearthstone in their inventory that can be used for instant travel back to whatever inn they are bound to. Binding at an inn involves speaking to the innkeeper and selecting the "Make this inn my home" option. The Hearthstone can only be used once every 60 minutes, though some classes receive spells with the same effect but with a much shorter timer. Personal Travel Certain classes, such as Mages, Druids, Hunters and Shamans, have different means of personal travel which help them get places faster. At level 40, all classes can purchase mounts. These are generally quite expensive, but provide a faster means of transportation than traveling eveywhere by foot. The Tram The Deeprun Tram runs for free between Stormwind and Ironforge. The entrances to the tram are found in the Dwarven District in Stormwind and in Tinkertown in Ironforge. The tram comes every few minutes and is a very fast means of free travel between the two major Alliance cities in the Eastern Kingdoms. Items Item Quality Items are ranked by their quality in World of Warcraft, identifiable by the color of the item's name. For equippable items (weapons, armour, etc.), gray names indicate Poor quality, white names indicate Common quality, green names are Uncommon, blue names are Rare, and purple names indicate Epic items. For non-equippable items the colors are the same. Gray named items that you can't equip generally have no use in the game, and should just be sold to vendors for cash. The exception are 'collect x of x item' quests, which may occasionally require gray items. Item Binding Some items in World of Warcraft can become permanently attached to one particular person, making it impossible to trade them or sell them to other players. There are two types: those that will bind when first equipped, and those that will bind when they are looted or picked up. You will get a warning dialog telling you that looting the item will permanently bind it to you when you either equip or loot such an item. Once an item is bound to you, it will say 'Soulbound'. You can sell soulbound items to vendor NPCs. Acquiring Items Items are acquired in several ways: # Whacking monsters #* Note that named monsters often have a high chance of dropping the same item over and over again. They are often marked as Elite monsters. # Completing quests #* If you do quests, you are sure to end up with a "good" set of equipment. Whacking monsters can provide extra-special items, but since quests give both items and XP (well, most of the time), I recommend doing the quests. #* I recommend that you use quest-items as a "baseline" - getting all items by tradeskilling or whacking monsters is hard. # Getting them from other players #* The typical way is the Trade window. #* This includes via mail from your own characters (if they are on the same server). #* It also includes buying them from the Auction House. # Making them yourself #* Tradeskills provide items that are one notch above equal-level quest items, but (''at the time I write this -Sarf) with more time required to create the tradeskill item. However, you can send items you make to your other character (and to other players), so consider investing one character into the tradeskills. Besides, it's fun. :) # Buying them from vendor NPCs #* Most vendors sell stuff appropriate for the level area they occupy. It is easy to buy stuff, but most items cost more than can be found in the Auction House, but usually are in infinite supply. Some vendors sell a limited number of certain items and the number available appears in parentheses () on the item's icon. Vendors rarely sell Uncommon quality or better items. Item Attributes Most items in World of Warcraft have one or more attributes. Depending on what class you chose to play, some attributes become more important than others. Quests Obtaining and Completing Quests Quests are the core of the World of Warcraft experience. You will almost always have at least a dozen active quests in your quest log. Quests are obtained from NPCs or from dropped items in the world. There are a few indicators that appear above NPC's heads when they have a quest to offer you: * A gold '''! means that the NPC has a new quest that they can offer you. * A silver !' means that the NPC will have a new quest for you soon, after you gain a level or two. * A gold '? means that the NPC wants to talk to you as part of a current quest you're on, usually meaning that you've completed the requirements for the quest. * A silver ?' means that the NPC is waiting for you to complete a quest, but you haven't finished the requirements yet. NPCs can offer you more than one quest; when talking to them, you'll get a window giving you the option to select which quest you wish to talk to them about, using the same symbols as appear over their heads. All quests in World of Warcraft are single-step, but there will often be multiple followup quests that turn into a long quest series. Try to get and finish all the quests in a given geographic locale before moving on to a higher-level area with new quests (i.e., the Anvilmar area, the Dwarf starting town in Dun Morogh). The reason for this is that other quests may send you in different directions and into other map areas. By the time you get back to the original quest track, the quests have gone gray. They can still be accomplished, but any items received will be below your current level, the XP will be much less helpful, and the cash, if any, will be small change compared to the amounts you are currently bringing in from looting and selling Vendor trash items. Quest Items Quest items are random drops ''per player. This means that you are not competing for quest drops with others in your party. Some quest items, such as those that you need to bring back to prove that you killed a particular monster (for example, "Head of Arra'Chea") will drop for all members of the party. See the looting section for more information on how loot works. Quest Rewards Quests will usually result in a decent chunk of XP, and some cash or an item (or two). Quests will always show you the reward that you will receive before you accept them (other than xp), and if there is a choice between different results, you will be able to choose one when you complete the quest. The completion of quests will also impact your reputation with particular factions, which can have further beneficial effects such as cheaper prices at vendors and access to special vendors such as mounts. Abandoning a Quest You can abandon a quest at any time using the Abandon button in the Quest Log. There is no penalty in abandoning a quest, and you can go back to the quest giver and get the quest again. Some quests are timed, and a timer window will appear telling you how long you have; if it's not a convenient time to do the quest, you can abandon it and do it later. Abandoning and reacquiring a quest is also a good way to restart a quest step if you think there is a problem with the step. When you abandon a quest, be sure to delete any quest items you may have if you wish to free up inventory space. Keep your quest items if you wish to go back and get the quest later. Many quests that involve escorting an NPC through an area full of mobs can be quite difficult to do alone. "The Defias Traitor" quest in Westfall is one such example, as is the Undead quest in Silverpine Forest "Escorting Erland." The NPCs of those quests are suicidal hotshots who engage each enemy within a 10 yard radius despite your directive to keep them alive, leaving you to save them from themselves as well as all the other mobs attempting to eat both of you. Failing these quests occurs commonly, so you can easily abandon it and start over. Or, in some cases, if you find yourself overwhelmed during quests like these, abandon the quest and run away as far as you can, and try it again when you are at a higher level or have some backup coming with you. Parties Joining and Leaving Parties You can select any player and right-click on their portrait in the target window to invite them to a party or to trade with them. If they are already in a party, you cannot invite them—instead, you may wish to ask them if they can invite you to join their party. It is considered rude to invite somebody into a party, especially if they have not asked for a party, without first speaking with them.--Sta'rus To leave a party, right-click on your own icon in the upper left and select Leave Party. Note: You can invite friendly characters into a party from anywhere on the server by using the /invite '' command. Looting Looting and loot drops in World of Warcraft are fairly straightforward. If the corpse of a monster has gold sparkles on top of it, it means there's something on the corpse that you can loot. Once you loot a corpse, if you don't take everything off it, everyone else in your group will have the option to loot. There are a few different looting types in parties that can be set by the party leader by right-clicking on his own portrait in the upper left. Two of these types are affected by the loot threshold, also set by the leader (the threshold can be set to Uncommon, Rare, or Legendary). Money loot is always shared in a party regardless of loot type. However, if a party member is out of range when a monster is killed, and so did not contribute to the kill, they will not receive a share of any gold found on a corpse and will not be able to roll for any special items found. ; Free for All : Anyone can loot any item off any corpse killed by the group. ; Round Robin : Group members take turns looting corpses as they are killed; they are allowed to loot all items from a corpse. ; Master Looter : Only the designated master looter (set by the party leader by right-clicking on any member's portrait) may loot corpses first. For any item that is of the same or better type than the threshold, when the master looter attempts to loot it, he will see a dropdown list of all the party members' names. He can select a person from that list to assign the item to them. ; Group Loot : This is the default type for a group. Looting takes place the same as in Round Robin looting. However, for any item that is of the same or better type than the threshold, all members in the party will get a rolling window with the item and two buttons. Party members can press the dice button to roll for the item, or the red slash to pass on the item. The member with the highest roll will get the item automatically placed in their inventory. It is often recommended that the group set out guidelines for what to roll on and what not to roll on when using Group Loot. A general rule-of-thumb is to not roll on something you can't equip but someone else can. ; Need Before Greed : Similar to Group Loot, only this mode follows a system of only allowing party members to roll on an item if it 'can be used' by them. There are flaws with this system, both in the code itself and with regards to limitations of the system itself. It is recommended that you use 'Group Loot' in lieu of Need Before Greed, and simply clarify to people what they should and shouldn't roll on beforehand. Note: there are some bugs currently with this system; in particular, the loot icon will appear even when you are not allowed to loot that corpse. The game will let you know in no uncertain terms that it's not for you to loot ("That would be stealing."). Raids Raids are a set of 2-8 groups of 5. These are primarily used for large-scale PvP combat, or for raid-specific instances and zones. You can convert your group into a raid group by accessing your 'Social' Panel, selecting 'Raid' and choosing 'Convert Group to Raid'. From then on, anyone you invite will join your raid group. Keep in mind that Raid groups do not receive quest rewards. This is to prevent people from creating infinitely large groups in order to do normal quests that do not need raid groups to complete. You also receive an experience penalty for any killing you do in a raid group. Again, this is to prevent people for using raid groups in situations where normal groups should be sufficient. (Anyone know the actual formula for raid exp penalty?) Instanced Dungeons Group encounters Instanced Dungeons (or "Instances") are where the fun really begins. These are not the sort of places you'll want to do alone. Unlike many random areas of the game where you may easily get by as a solo player, Instances and Dungeons are ''designed to challenge whole groups of players. Most instances and dungeons will require at least 4 people to complete successfully. They usually contain many Elite monsters. Examples of instances include Shadowfang Keep of Silverpine Forest, the Deadmines of Westfall, Gnomeregan of Dun Morogh, and so on. The Deeprun Tram is also an instance, though there aren't any monsters there and it's just for transportation purposes. Instances are great for groups to go and get experience and loot (the Deadmines in particular is known for dropping good items for the 18~24 level range), though they may often present quite a challenge. It is ideal, therefore, to construct well-balanced groups that include members to fill all party roles, like having a Paladin or Warrior for tanking, a Hunter for melee and ranged support, Mages for damage and firepower and combat control, and potentially Priests for healing and resurrecting. Resurrection is probably the most important function to include (a good-level Paladin or a Priest will suffice in this area), followed by healing. Instances are both sources of excitement, and of dread. A place for you and your group only In the regular world, monsters exist and walk around doing whatever it is monsters do when the players aren't there. Anybody can come along, kill them, get the loot, skin them or whatever, and move on. If one player kills a monster, obviously it can't be killed twice. That means other players have to wait until that monster respawns, which occurs regularly (within 5~15 minutes depending on which monster is in question). Some monsters are quest targets which need to be killed by any player attempting to complete that quest (a simple example is Goldtooth from the mines above Northshire, for humans starting out). You may find yourself waiting for Goldtooth to respawn before you can kill him again. You may even be able to kill the same monster any number of times, as long as you wish to wait around. In instances, it doesn't quite work the same way. Each group that goes into an instanced dungeon gets their own version of it -- their own instance of it, hence the name. This means you will never be inconvenienced by another group going in and killing all of the monsters and getting the loot before you do, but you will also never have the possibility of having another group or player come along and saving your hides from an ugly battle! Each group gets to go through the whole place on their very own. This can mean some good loot and experience as a group progresses through an instance. Furthermore, the monsters in the area tend not to respawn until after some kind of scripted trigger- such as killing the head boss mob. In the Deadmines in Westfall, the Goblins and Defias Miners (of various types) stay dead. The wandering Defias Enforcers and Taskmasters are the only ones that respawn regularly (just to keep things interesting). However, as soon as the Head Boss Edwin Van Cleef is killed, the Dungeon respawns with monsters, and it may end up being a bit of a fight to get back out without using your Hearthstones. Death and ressurection in instances If you die in an instance, your spirit need only find its way back to the entrance of it. As soon as you re-enter the instance, you are resurrected as normal. However this can mean that you may have a long way to run before you catch up to the rest of your group. In certain cases you may end up fighting your way back to your group (or they may end up fighting their way back to "you"!). The benefit of this is that if every member of your group dies in a battle, you don't need to go walk around looking for you corpses. You just need to to re-enter the instance, and everyone gets revived at the same point. If it has taken your group some time to get to a point in an instance you want to avoid having to fight your way back in again. It's smart to try to allow characters with ressurection abilities, such as Priests, Paladin/Shaman or Druids to survive a difficult fight even if other characters must sacrifice themselves in the process. If these particular classes are to survive a disaster that kills the rest of the party they can eventually ressurect the whole party. Thus allowying you to begin again at the point you were up to and avoid a long fight on the way back in. Chat and Interface Channels World of Warcraft has a chat channel system to allow players to create their own private chat channels. Use the '''/chat command to get a listing of chat channel commands. You will automatically join chat channels "General", "Trade", "LocalDefense", "WorldDefense", and "LookingForGroup" when you create your character. To send a message to a chat channel, type "/# (message)" where # is the number of the channel you would like to send to. 1 is always the "General" channel, and 2 is the Trade channel when in a city. (Type /chatlist to see a list of channels you are currently on.) Item links can be sent by shift-clicking any item, but they won't work in any "numbered" chats other than the Trade channel, which only appears in large cities. Links will work in party, say, and guild chat. (This was done to prevent item/trade spamming in the General chat channel; unfortunately, it also means that you can't share item links with friends in private chat channels.) Configuring Windows By default, you don't see the combat log window. If you hover over (move the mouse onto) the chat window, two tabs will appear. You can drag the Combat Log tab out to create a new window; right-clicking on the tab will bring up a menu with more chat configuration options. For further customization of the user interface, check out Cosmos. -- Goldark The Mail System For a price ( ), you can send in-game mail to other players. This can be sent when other players are offline or online. An icon will appear near your minimap indicating if you have new Unread Mail. To read your mail, visit the postbox outside any inn. You can also send items through mail to other players as "attachments". Sending mail is instantanous, unless there is an item attached, in which case the message will take one hour to be delivered. Attachments are returned to the sender if the message goes unread for 30 days, or if the recipient does not remove the item from their mailbox within 3 days of reading the message. Author(s) Original guide written by Rustak; hopefully contributions by many more. Intro Fly-thru and Starting Areas section added by Fandyllic. Category:Newbies